I had a thought about M18 last night. This could be mostly that i have a fever and im pretty out of it; but if the sniper knew his teammates why not shoot D1 P1?

Also depends on what you consider vanilla. For me, a game is vanilla as long as it isn't:
- role madness
- multi mafia
- cultists
- reverse mafia

I guess some people would consider anything but the Cop/Vig/Doc lineup to be non-vanilla, but that's such a boring take on the game.

You can inflict maximum town chaos and confusion by shooting immediatley at start of game. Maybe thats a question for ND. I think he was sniper iirc

To me, vanilla means a disemphasis on roles in general. It matters less what the few that exist are and more that the game is about scumhunting rather than the setup.

M18 doesn't qualify because the amount of PRs meant it was basically auto for town after a couple of days without scumhunting.

M20 had a bunch of item mechanics and a third party.

I didn't play in Jamie's game, but it had death mechanics that were atypical and no shortage of roles, many of them new and complicated.

By your definition of vanilla, I wouldn't want those any more than once in a long while (never, really, but some people like them).

What style of player thrives most in a vanilla setup as opposed to a research heavy setup. Its nice having various role combinations to research. Adds to hunts.

the games dramatically got more balanced since role madness. We have had almost all of the last several games go to lylo. Excluding m21 slaughter

I find that power roles add to the thought process. Power roles and the information they provide turn it from a reading challenge to a logic puzzle.

I think that heavy PR games end up in a situation where the play of PRs matters far more than the play of VTs. This makes them far more swingy, and not as much fun when you're a VT.

I'm not sure if it benefits some players. The good players tend to be good at parsing the format too. I think the really non-vanilla setups might make fearkills slightly less likely (part of the reason HR survived so long this game was that everyone kind of expected him to die elsewhere), and may be better for anyone who likes to fakeclaim heavily. People like brain or bo who freak out when they get any role are probably better off in vanilla setups, and it really just comes down to who's the best at hiding/finding scum.

@Chaqa, why is it being a logic puzzle a good thing? The logic puzzle is inevitably either unsolvable or very easily solvable depending on where you are in the game. To me, that's not what the game is about.

I guess. I just prefer to have interesting roles that I can really try to piece together who did X and why they did it. I'm fine with vanilla-ish setups as long as they have at least that core trio of cop/doc/vig though.

I don't think I'll be GMing until M30, so you've got a long respite from my antics.

@ghug: because "reads" and scum-hunting are subjective. I prefer working with things that can be reasoned. Vote counts, night action results, probabilities are the stuff I like to see. I can't read a post and determine what the "meaning is". I never have been good at interpretation or literary stuff.

Gunsmith is alot more fun than vig. Gunsmith has more to do than just point and click.

Its one thing to say people are scumhunting but are they? Zorclex had numerous scum slips but was being ardently defended simply for being new.

I was the only person yelling at you about new players and I scumread zorclex for a long time.

Mafia is more of an art than a science. And like any art, there's more than one way of doing things. Focusing on experienced scum rather than the newbie scum has it's merits. So does focusing on everyone. Let's leave it at that.

The reason I like roles that give out items like gunsmith or neighborizer, is it makes it possible for VT's to do cool stuff still.

@Chaqa, I'm definitely more of a concrete analytical person as well. I like mafia specifically because you have to step outside of that and do analysis on things that lack objective conclusions. If it's just a logic puzzle of matching actions to people, it ends up being a fairly easy one, or an impossible one, and that's not fun.

Lets not get into the whole "im better at scumhunting than you" stuff. You can line your walls with mvp trophies and still be barely getting it right 50% of the time.

Is that what anybody is talking about?

Hardly anyone is good on day 1 at catching scum. Day 1 tends to be the most lax least investogative day. People just settle for someone elses bad logic.

It seems like many people are unmoved by others scumhunting. They tend to need very detailed reasons when there may not be any to highlight. Especially early.

Catching scum on day 1 isn't all that hard if you really focus on it. It's convincing the rest of the town to lynch that person that's damn near impossible, and day 1 wagons form with so much uncertainty that they are volatile enough to dissipate and new ones form out of nowhere with barely any time left.

Day 1 is amazing for reads. People should use it more later on in the game.

Town leave the biggest tracks early. Scum the least. People always look for the most glaring signs (lurked alot, anchored, got angry, voted too much, ect)

Scum outside of straight up newbishness very rarely leave such blatant moves. Scum arent going to openly risk stupid reaction tests or start citing poetry(vecna)

Catching scum day 1 is easy if the scum is bo.

Too scummy to be scum is a great tactic that someone is gonna use to perfection in one of these games at some point. Count on it.

Town leave the biggest tracks early, so look outside of those people. It narrows the group down, usually by a lot.

I dont think scum has ever fake breadcrumbed page 1 since ive begun playing.

I didn't do it page 1 but I did it throughout day 1 once as scum and it bit me in the ass.